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D&D offers a unique creative space. Theoretically, it serves as a empty slate where the creativity of DMs and participants can craft any kind of picture. However, Dungeons & Dragons also carries a 50-year legacy of worlds, creatures, magic systems, well-known NPCs, and general lore. Even the best imaginative thinkers find it difficult to entirely detach themselves from this vast landscape of references, meaning that a lot of “fresh” content for D&D is a reworking of sampled tracks. Sometimes you get things that sound as good as “a classic hit,” on other occasions you wince like when listening to “a derivative tune.”

The show Critical Role has been highly inventive in the past due to the original settings of its first setting (designed by the DM Matt Mercer) and now Aramán (the world crafted by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan for Campaign 4). Although devoted followers of Brennan and his other series Dimension 20 work may recognize some of his recurring motifs (He really hates the gods!), episode 2 stood out to me because of a highly innovative interpretation on a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster category: angelic beings.

A Brief History of Celestials in Dungeons & Dragons

Fiendish creatures (collectively known as evil outsiders) have been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the mid-70s, but it required more time for their angelic equivalents to appear. A few unique “angels” with specific names appeared in the publication Dragon issues 12 (Feb. 1978) and 17 (Aug. 1978). These were little more than variations of the angels from biblical religious lore; for truly unique interpretations, we had to hold out for 1982 and the creator Gary Gygax’s “Featured Creatures” article in Dragon magazine, where he presented new monsters that would be included in 1983’s Monster Manual 2. That’s when the deva angel, the planetar, and the solar made their debut, starting a tradition of creatures known as celestial entities that is continues to exist in the latest edition of the role-playing game.

In Dungeons & Dragons, celestials are the agents of benevolent gods, made by their masters to act as soldiers, commanders, emissaries, liaisons with mortals, and overall to populate their realms in the Heavenly Realms. They are champions of good who battle the forces of chaos and evil from the Infernal Realms and help uphold the faith of their god on the mortal world. Despite their close connection with the divine beings, celestials are distinct persons with individual traits. Famous examples encompass Lumalia and the fallen Zariel from the Forgotten Realms setting, the Lady of the Lake from Greyhawk, and even the iconic Dame Aylin from the game Baldur’s Gate 3.

Celestial lore is markedly underdeveloped in contrast to fiends. The Abyss has 99 layers of expanding chaos and demon lords warring amongst themselves. The infernal Nine Hells are a version of the series Game of Thrones with more bloodshed and more interesting subplots. And that’s not even mentioning the mysterious Yugoloth. Meanwhile, everything you need to know about celestial beings can be gathered in an hour of wiki reading.

It’s not surprising that beings who look like biblical angels went underdeveloped. Rumor has it that Gygax felt uneasy about providing gamers game statistics for angels they could kill in their games, and although celestials were later expanded with a bigger range of appearances and roles, that controversial beginning stunted their development. There is also a limit to what you can create for creatures that are created to be divine minions. Certainly, they have independent thought, but their storytelling range is limited. In that sense, the antagonists have much more freedom: They have established masters (Lords of Demons, Infernal Dukes, and etc.) but they’re ultimately unpredictable and disorderly entities that can evolve in a many ways without losing their distinct identity.

How Critical Role Campaign 4 Reimagines Celestials

Honestly, I understand: Celestial beings are simply not very compelling. Holy warriors of good that smite evil in every manifestation can be impressive, but they also get cheesy very fast. That widespread disinterest means we still don’t know that much about celestials. As an illustration, we still don’t know what occurs after the god who made them dies. There is no official explanation, and every DM is able to come up with their own spin. The DM Brennan Lee Mulligan chose to center this issue at the heart of the setting of Aramán, one where the deities have all been killed by mortals in a great conflict that ended 70 years prior to the start of the story. So what became of the servants of these gods?

Mulligan’s answer is simple, horrifying, and very interesting: They became insane and became a blight that devastated entire countries. A great deal about the history of this world, the war against the gods, and its aftermath in the current era has still to be revealed, but it seems that when the gods died, the celestials went “feral”. They transformed into creatures that could annihilate large areas if left unchecked. Viewers caught a sight of how frightening one of these creatures can be at the end of episode 2, as the character Wicander (Sam Riegel) got to meet his “grandfather,” a fearsome celestial kept chained in a massive coffin.

It is no accident that the most interesting celestial beings in Dungeons & Dragons, narratively, are those who have lost their divinity. Zariel, as an instance, was a mighty Solar angel whose fixation with ending the Blood War resulted in her being corrupted by the devil Asmodeus and turned into an Archdevil. Fazrian is a obscure Planetar angel who was summoned by a cleric inside the dungeon Undermountain and developed a fixation on “purging” the evil in the Terminus level of the huge labyrinth, gradually yielding to the insanity permeating the location.

The corruption observed in Campaign 4 of Critical Role takes a different shape. These celestial beings did not lose their virtue. They were not deceived, or led astray by their own pride or obsessions. They are casualties; another terrible result of the Shapers’ War. As the new campaign continues, it is hoped Mulligan concentrates on the notion that, no matter how “just” that conflict was, the humans who emerged victorious may still regret the consequences. Their realm has been wounded, their link to the hereafter has been severed, and the beings that were once their guardians, shepherding their souls to security after death, are currently frightening disasters.

Sure, this may just be a convenient way to address Gygax’s initial quandary. It is simple to rationalize slaying an angel when it’s a screaming, insane creature with multiple fangs, but I also feel very intrigued by this fresh variation of the celestial mythology in Dungeons & Dragons. I am not entirely in accord with the DM’s loathing for divine beings in his campaigns, but I nonetheless favor these monstrous celestials to the flat {